http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/14/as-software-eats-the-world-non-tech-corporations-are-eating-startups/ Either become a software driven enterprise and/or buy a startup with agile teams: Over the past year or two, non-tech corporations have begun to actually open their wallets to arm themselves with talent and technology that can help them enter the digital and data-focused world we now live and work in. It’s no longer Google, Facebook and Yahoo that are competing to acquire the best and the brightest startups in Silicon Valley. There are plenty of corporations in retail, health, agriculture, financial services and other industries that are sending their corp-dev talent to scout out possible acquisitions in the Bay Area and beyond. Let’s take a look at some of the examples. Earlier this year, Monsanto, a multinational chemical, and agricultural biotechnology corporation, bought big data weather tech company Climate Corporation for $1.1 billion. Insurer UnitedHealth Group bought health data analytics company Humedica for hundreds of millions of dollars. A few weeks ago, fitness clothing retailer Under Armour bought fitness tracking app developer MapMyFitness for $150 million. Office supply retailer Staples bought e-commerce personalization company Runa. Payments processing giant First Data has acquired mobile loyalty startup Perka and mobile payments startup Clover in the past year. Retail giant Target has picked up a number of e-commerce companies. Ford Motors bought in-car music app startup Livio. The list goes on. Their main motivation is realizing that software is eating the world. Exitround, the website that launched earlier this year and lets startups anonymously seek acquirers, has been seeing a strong uptick in non-tech, corporate acquirers joining the marketplace to find potential talent and startups. “Their main motivation is realizing that software is eating the world, and they have to add software talent and technologies to their products,” explained Exitround founder Jacob Mullins. On the marketplace, Mullins says that 10 percent of buyers are Fortune 500 companies and 20 percent of acquirers are publicly traded, with a good percentage of the group being non-tech companies

No need to configure VMs, databases, AppServers, Load-balancers… Developers can focus on development and not infrastructure plumbing Separate the concerns of AppDev and Operations Eliminate the bottleneck of provisioning and deployment processes Make full use of investments in the “Cloud”

Source 1: The software edge, How effective software development and delivery drives competitive advantage, IBM Institute for Business Value The importance of SW development: 54% of cos believe it’s critical But only 25% leverage it today Those who leverage it (software development) effectively outperform those who don’t In fact, almost 70 percent of the companies currently leveraging software development for competitive advantage outperform their peers from a profitability standpoint. Source 2: Platform: The Cloud Foundry Conference - Jonathan Murray http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIg7TO0CaKA Source 3: Financial Times – Banks need to take on Amazon and Google or die – Francisco Gonzalez, Chief Executive BBA – BBVA is the second largest bank in Spain, after Santander. Since 2006 the bank has focused on overseas expansion, and now operates in 40 countries. €22 billion revenue in 2012. Some bankers and analysts think that Google, Facebook, Amazon or the like will not fully enter a highly regulated, low-margin business such as banking. I disagree. What is more, I think banks that are not prepared for such new competitors face certain death. Technology has already transformed many industries. Next in line is banking. In two or three years, only 5 per cent of consumer interaction will be through branches. The rules have changed and a new league of competitors is emerging.

No need to configure VMs, databases, AppServers, Load-balancers… Developers can focus on development and not infrastructure plumbing Separate the concerns of AppDev and Operations Eliminate the bottleneck of provisioning and deployment processes Make full use of investments in the “Cloud”

No need to configure VMs, databases, AppServers, Load-balancers… Developers can focus on development and not infrastructure plumbing Separate the concerns of AppDev and Operations Eliminate the bottleneck of provisioning and deployment processes Make full use of investments in the “Cloud”

No need to configure VMs, databases, AppServers, Load-balancers… Developers can focus on development and not infrastructure plumbing Separate the concerns of AppDev and Operations Eliminate the bottleneck of provisioning and deployment processes Make full use of investments in the “Cloud”

No need to configure VMs, databases, AppServers, Load-balancers… Developers can focus on development and not infrastructure plumbing Separate the concerns of AppDev and Operations Eliminate the bottleneck of provisioning and deployment processes Make full use of investments in the “Cloud”